Splinters in the Head
by jiminy-crickety
Summary: Jack asks Ragetti how he lost his eye and how he plans to get it back. Set during film three.


Splinters in the Head

Ragetti slipped through the net curtain into the captain's cabin. The rum bottle was wobbling precariously on the tray he carried in his spindly arms. He set it down on the table where Jack was hunching over a confused pile of maps and sea charts. The captain briefly raised his head and made a vague gesture, acknowledging that his drink had been brought to him. Then suddenly he jumped in his seat, dropping his quill and compass. He eyed his waiter with fear and animosity.

"_You_…" he said in a low voice.

Rags shuffled, nervously. "_Me_, Cap'tin?"

"You scare me," muttered Jack, not for the first time.

Rags cringed apologetically. He was a ragged little skeleton of a man with greasy hair, buck teeth and a splintering wooden eye. It baffled him to think that he could intimidate anyone, particularly the legendary Jack Sparrow. Not wishing to cause any further offense he slunk towards the doorway.

Jack quickly raised a hand to halt him. Rags stood rooted to the spot as the captain got to his feet, stepped out from behind the table and then crept cautiously towards him like a man approaching a mangled animal carcass in the woods.

"How is it that you came to lose that peeper of yours, sonny?" asked Jack, his face contorting with a look of horrified revulsion.

Rags twitched and winced, as the grisly memory flared in his added mind. He had been serving as a pot-wash boy at the Seadog tavern in Tortuga bay. Late one night, when he had been mopping the blood and vomit from the floorboards, a swarthy band of pirates had kicked open the doors and seated themselves at a table demanding a plate of eggs. Rags had scurried into the kitchens where the drunken cook had cuffed him soundly and blasted that they didn't serve eggs at supper time. He said that their guests would have to wait until morning and have their eggs for breakfast.

Rags shuddered. The pirates hadn't been too happy when he had delivered the cook's message. Their pockmarked leader had barred his yellow teeth and hissed that if the hens wouldn't lay and the cook wouldn't boil, then they would take their eggs out of him. That's when the pirates had seized him and thrown him down on the tabletop. Rags had gone loose as a wet piece of string, knowing he couldn't fight them. His only defense was to stay limp, keep quiet and hope his tormentors lost interest in him. Unfortunately that evening the pirate's appetite was not to be swayed. Their leader had stooped over him, gripped his jaw and plunged a spoon into his eye socket. The agony had been excruciating but short-lived as the pirate gouged out his eye and dropped it onto his plate with a wet splat. Rags had been sniveling, whimpering and clutching his bloodied face as the pirate stuck a fork into his eyeball, lifted it to his mouth and swallowed it whole.

Pirates like their eggs. Really bad eggs.

"My eye…" Rags murmured, fingering his cheek. "Got eaten, sir. By a pirate…"

He had been terrified of pirates for years after this traumatizing incident. They still frightened him even now. He had found the only way to stop living in fear of pirates was to join them. Rags had been given his wooden eye by Barbossa; the piece of eight that he was to guard until the next Brethren court. After that he supposed he would wear a patch to cover the unsightly hole in his face, though Pintel had promised to buy him a glass eye if he came by the money.

Jack winced at his answer. "Eaten, you say? Nasty business." His brow creased, thoughtfully. "So how are you planning to retrive it?"

Rags squinted in confusion. "_Can't_, sir. He ate it."

"Well now…" Jack scoffed, a smile stretching his lips. "If you remember, my good lad, I myself was _eaten_ by that ravenous beastie we know as the Kraken. I was swallowed, devoured, gobbled up and taken in its foul bloated belly to Davy Jones locker. But you got me back, didn't ya?"

Jack grinned triumphantly. Then his smile began to falter.

"Or…or did you?" His voice quavered. "Am I really _here_? All in one piece?! Or are the crumbs of me still scattered at world's end..?"

Jack's patted his torso frantically trying to assure himself that it remained solid and whole. Rags raised his shoulders in an honest shrug. The captain's wild and eloquent ruminations were too much for his slow simple brain to absorb all at once. But he sensed a riddle was being put to him. He liked riddles.

"Well…maybe you…_lost_ a part of yourself too, sir?" Rags offered, halting.

Jack looked thunderstruck. He raised his hands as though he were having an epiphany.

"That's why you scare me!" he exclaimed. "It's like I'm looking into a rather hideous mirror when I clap my eyes on you, boy. We're both suffering with the same affliction, ain't we? _Splinters_. Splinters in the head! I can feel them crawling through my hair. Sometimes they sit on my shoulder, whispering into my ear. Sometimes they will strut around me in circles. Sometimes we will laugh together and share fond tales of our knavery and conquests. Sometimes, if they offend me, I will run the scurvy beggars through the gizzard! And sometimes…there's a goat…"

Rags scratched his head, feeling utterly lost. "A _goat_, Cap'tin?"

"Aye!" he insisted. "A bloody goat sitting next to me!"

Jack flinched and spun around, his deranged eyes searching the cabin for any inexplicable goats that might have wandered inside recently. His roaming stare settled on Ragetti's shoulder. His pupils dilated and his mouth fell slack. Rags stood ridged with fright as the captain reached out and plucked at the collar of his jacket. Jack lifted his hand up before his remaining eye. Nothing was held between his pinched fingers.

"_My peanut_!" Jack snapped.

Rags stammered a laugh and then raised his hands in surrender, trying to assure the captain that he had no intention of stealing his invisible nut. He nodded towards the bottle of rum sitting on the tabletop, imagining that Jack might calm down and feel better if he enjoyed a drink or seven. Jack cupped his palms together and slowly returned to his chair, making a few strange clucking noises in his throat as he went.

"My peanut…" he whispered again.

Rags stood blinking and frowning for a moment. Then he shook his head and turned to leave the cabin. He felt like he had found an answer to the riddle now, but he didn't think that the captain would want to hear it. So he kept it to himself…

…_Better to lose an eye than your mind_.

The End


End file.
